One Year Ago

One year ago, exactly, Mike and I started our adventure to Ireland. We started out in the morning and drove to Washington D.C. where we meet my dad so he could take us to the airport and then subsequently store our car during our trip. We boarded the plane that evening and spent the whole night flying over the Atlantic. To remember our AWESOME trip I have collected a few pictures to share. One from each day to be exact. :)


Whew! That was harder than I thought it would be! I wanted to include every picture. :)

One year later....almost!

I can't believe that it has almost been a year since we traveled to Ireland! We have so many good memories of that trip and still bring them up like they just happened last week. We also had a TON of great pictures. I, unfortunately, never got around to making some sort of electronic scrapbook but last night I finally finished the actual scrapbook! You will have to come visit me (hint, hint!) to see all the pages but here is a sneak peak of the cover. I am so glad I got it done before the year mark came and went! It will be a great keepsake from our awesome trip together! :)

Back in NC

So we are back from our international travels and pretty much back into the swing of things. We (when I say we I mean Emily!) have begun the process of sorting through the pictures and organizing them. At the moment, I am organizing them and uploading them all (all 1100!!!) to our Picasa Web Albums. Therefore, if you have a desire to look at every single one you may do so. The web link for that is: http://picasaweb.google.com/emcamp. In the meantime, I am going to try and get them in a "prettier" format for all to enjoy. This will be some sort of slideshow - I just haven't decided exactly what I want to do yet.

Here is a teaser picture of the BEAUTIFUL landscape that Ireland has to offer!! :)

Going home tomorrow....

So the trip that we have been planning for 8 months has come to an end. We are back in Dublin tonight and we fly out tomorrow. It was a wonderful trip! We had some very unique weather for Ireland during our entire trip - no rain! The whole time was beautiful and we really got to enjoy the country. And we survived the Irish roads! Well, we still have to drive to the airport tomorrow - hopefully that will be uneventful.

Once we get back home and get organized we will post some stories and pictures from our adventures. We had a great trip but we are looking forward to being home!

Ireland: Day 2

So Emily, Chrissy, and I had a blast today in Dublin. We all had brunch (that meal after brecks) at Cafe' Harry's in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dunleary) and then Emily and I spent some time walking along the pier while Chrissy met a friend at another cafe' for an hour or two. After this we all drove south of Dublin to Powers Court estate and had tea with scones and cream. The estate was actually the castle that Edmund Dantes buys in the modern movie adaptation of the Counte of Monte Christo. After this we took a wonderfully scenic ride back to Dublin and caught a free 3 hour symphony performed by the Dublin Symphony Orchestra with one of Chrissy's friends, Luke. We were a tad up a little late and had to wait for preorder tickets to free up so we missed a performance of Ballet Suite No. 1 by Shostakovich. However, we still got to here Divertimento by Stravinsky, Violin Concerto in D Major and Sleeping Beauty Suite by Tchaikovsky. Afterwards, the four of us got burger's at Eddie Rocket's (just like Johnny Rocket's in the States) and we talked for a while. Emily and I especially enjoying getting to know Luke, and hope to keep chatting with him. Anyhow, this will be the last post for a while because we don't have computer access once we leave Chrissy's tomorrow so we'll most likely journal when we get back. Here are some pics of our day below.

Ireland!

So we have landed in Ireland and spent a full day wandering around Dublin - getting very lost! - exploring the city. We are both exhausted and are fighting sleep so that we get ourselves on the right time zone but it was very hard to stay awake today, especially when sitting on the bus! Mike is also fighting a bit of a head cold which developed much more on the plane. It is just an annoying bug.

We are staying with our friend, Chrissy, during our 2 day stay in Dublin. She has a quaint townhouse right outside of Dublin which she shares with 2 other lovely girls. The little town nearby, Blackrock, is absolutely adorable! And they have the best Starbucks - beautiful view of the bay. :) But anyways, once we pick up our car Saturday morning we are heading west and then north for the rest of our time in Ireland.

We probably will not be able to update the blog much more than today for the rest of the trip but we wanted to post some pictures from our explorations today in the city of Dublin. (There were no real good pictures of us so all you get is scenery!)

Beautiful flowers for sale at Grafton Street.

The Guinness Storehouse! Huge distillery right in the middle of Dublin. We decided not to pay for the tour but just to explore the outside. Tomorrow we will get our pint of Guinness when we got out to dinner!

Fun brightly colored front doors of the Georgian townhomes in downtown.